


Until She Comes Home

by dinodo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (bc I watched it after oops), Canonical Character Death mentions, Gen, Missing Scene, Self-Reflection, ignores slingshot miniseries, set pre-season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 07:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11179617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinodo/pseuds/dinodo
Summary: It’s nothing special, medical supplies, an extra ICER, a few odd gadgets probably supplied courtesy of FitzSimmons. But just the feeling of it, of opening this kind of bag to see this kind of gear in this kind of hideout—if she takes a moment, closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that nothing has changed.





	Until She Comes Home

The door is nothing remarkable, just old wood with an older lock and a rusted metal handle, blocking off a room that was certainly even less so. If anyone was to walk by it—just another room in the hall of the run-down motel that Daisy is currently standing in—they would surely pay it no attention, to busy with whatever had brought them to the god-forsaken residence in the first place to notice anything out of place. Daisy, though, is not just anyone. And standing here in front of this door the wood seems almost metaphorical; a seemingly solid and unbreakable barrier between her and her old life, really nothing more than a paper thin curtain when truly confronted.

She places a hand on the creaking wood and sighs. This is the first and last place she wants to be—the last time she did this was supposed to be the one and only, but when she left SHIELD she hadn’t even thought about the possibility of overexerting herself this frequently. It’s something she hasn’t felt in a while—not the brutality of the fights she’s gotten into, but the difficulty of taking on the bad guys without a partner at her back. Actually, everything about what she’s doing is harder without her partner—but that line of thought doesn’t lead anywhere happy.

When she did this the first time, she was almost surprised to even find the little bottle of pills still stashed away with Mack’s belongings. He never carried them for himself, they were another one of those little things the two of them had just begun to _do_ , like Daisy had always carried an extra gun or small axe or whatever extra weapon she could on missions, fitted to his hand, not hers, easily tossed, easily caught, just in case. Just in case… Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised.

She snaps back to. Time is short and they’ll be back soon—this room is a bad place for a hideout or a lookout spot, and an even worse place to leave unattended with their supplies inside. It’s a stupid risk in the first place, considering she doesn’t even know if Mack replaced the bone supplements, or even found them missing from the last time she’d taken them. Outwitting any SHIELD agent is difficult, and avoiding the few that know her inside out is even more so—if she wants to be out of here before Mack and Coulson get back, she has to move fast. Silently, she places a hand on the rough, rusted door handle and sends a wave of vibrations into it in just the right way. The lock clicks open.

Daisy opens the door slowly, and steps inside. The room is exactly what she’d expected. On first glance, nothing is other than you’d expect from an old motel room. Peeling paint, rickety floorboards, a tiny bed and a tinier desk. She sweeps her eyes over it all, and finds what she’s looking for on the side of the bed closest to the wall—two duffle bags, clothes and shoes spilling everywhere in disarray. Not inconspicuous at all, but Daisy learned early in her training that plain sight is sometimes the best hiding place. She goes to squat down next to it and begins to dig through the clothes to the more useful gear underneath.

Looking inside she’s hit by an unwarranted wave of nostalgia. It’s nothing special, medical supplies, an extra ICER, a few odd gadgets probably supplied courtesy of FitzSimmons. But just the feeling of it, of opening this kind of bag to see this kind of gear in this kind of hide out—if she takes a moment, closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that nothing has changed. That she never left. That she has just come back from finishing her scouting mission and is waiting for Mack and Coulson to return from theirs. Daisy takes a shaky breath. If she continues thinking this way for too long, she might not go at all.

Leaving SHIELD was not a decision she took lightly. She can imagine how it felt to the rest of her team, but she couldn’t stay—not after what had happened, not after everything she’d done and the chaos she’d cause and the people who had died because of her. SHIELD, no matter how long it has been in the shadows, has always been a place driven by people whose actions and intentions lay in the light. And although Daisy has always wanted to be someone who brings light and hope to the world, she’s no longer sure that’s possible. And more so, she’s certain that SHIELD is no longer a place she can try to be that person. Not when it feels like everything she touches falls apart. Not when she’s hurt so many people. SHIELD is a place for heroes, yes, but not for atoners. And she has done too much, has too much to make up for to try and be the first but not the second.

Finally, her hand catches on a smooth, cylindrical bottle. Mack did replace the supplements. _He’s some kind of sentimental_ , she thinks, returning the clothes to their scattered placement, but she’s not sure that’s all it is. Hopeful, maybe. Or perhaps it’s just a part of his routine, something carried over from when they were partners, packing med supplies and just reaching over to grab the pill bottle out of instinct, out of habit. Either way, he has to stop doing stuff like this. They aren’t partners anymore. She ended that when she caved his chest in—she still feels herself pushing waves of force into him over and over and remembers how he still hoped he could _save_ her, how his bones cracked under the pressure, how she felt—she felt it was _right_.

She pushes herself up from the ground and pulls her hat lower, shoving the pill bottle into her pocket and taking one last glance around the room. Maybe some day she’ll be able to forgive herself the way she knows Mack somehow has. But not today. No matter how much she wants to, she can’t go back, can’t act like she isn’t responsible for a near world ending event, can’t pretend that her powers have come at the cost of no one’s life, that they are only a force for good. Too many people have died because of her. Lincoln. Andrew. Even Trip. All consequences of her life, of the person she was somehow destined to become. It infuriates her to think of it—why she has been given these gifts, her powers, her life, her freedom—at the expense of so many people. She needs to sort it out herself, needs to somehow reconcile her continued existence at the expense of her friends’ before she can return to SHIELD. Even if SHIELD is the closest thing she has to a home.

Daisy is not near the place she needs to be to find peace. But, she thinks, maybe she’s found some modicum of purpose. She couldn’t hunt the watchdogs from inside SHIELD, couldn’t try her best to make the world safe for her people without upsetting the order of things, especially with a new, less flexible director. Maybe this is part of what she’s looking for, part of what her role is—to make sure the world is clear and safe and ready when her people begin to come into their powers in greater numbers. To make sure the inhuman registry doesn’t fall into the hands of someone who would use it as a kill list. To watch over her friends and her people from a distance, at least until something tells her that its time for that to change.

Walking down the street, the sun is bright and she squints her eyes against it. Coulson and Mack will be coming back in a few minutes. She’s not sure what Mack will think when he finds the pill bottle missing again—if he even notices it—but despite her insistence to herself that things cannot _cannot_ ever be the same, the fact that it was there wraps her heart in the safe, happy feeling of a warm hug. She unscrews the lid as she walks, pouring out the prescribed amount into her hand- her arms still ache from last night’s fight, but the supplements will help speed along the healing of the tiny fractures. She’s surprised when a tiny slip of paper falls out with the pills. She unfolds it to see a note in tiny cursive scrawl, with a phone number beneath it.

 

_Daisy,_

_You don’t have to come back. But at least let me help you. The supplements are not hard to get, and Mack and Coulson are not hard to follow, distract, get information from. Whatever you need. We are still a team, no?_

_They care about you. And he always brings them, just in case._

_Elena_

 

Daisy runs her fingers over the note and smiles. She tossed the pills into her mouth, caps the bottle, and pulls out her phone. She’s not going back, not yet at least. But she’s learned before that sometimes it’s best to accept help when it falls into your lap. And right now, a partner might be exactly what she needs.


End file.
